• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2289 0

They assert that He has a deputy in the third heaven whom they call the “Littler God” (allah al-asghar): they assert that He is the ruler (or organizer) of the world.45 The Gannat Bussame, a Syriac compendium against heresy written about the year 1000 CE, suggests that the Jews worship a Adonai Haqaton (Hebrew for “the Little Lord” or “the Little YHWH”), General of Adonai HaGadol (Hebrew for “the Great Lord” or “the Great YHWH”), which it views as scandalous error. No doubt, this is a figuration of various Jewish mystical doctrines arising out of the Daniel 7:9-13 traditions, which somewhat conform to the ideas found in the Hekhaloth literature. Although the tradition is very ancient (it is, in a way, the basis of Christology in Christianity), it can also be seen throughout Muslim history, with outstanding examples even as late as the powerful Shi’ite cleric Muḥammad Baqir b. Taqi Al-majlisi of Isfahan (1628-99).46

To be sure, it is difficult to talk about “heresy” per se in Islam, where sects tend to delegitimize each other with epithets like “un-islamic” (kafir, “denier”). Nevertheless, we can talk about these struggles in a general way with the Christian conception of heresy. The differences in the way these sects are described suggest that the Muslim heresiologists are not just copying from each other but know the phenomenon personally, though they may not be familiar enough to describe it exactly. Under the circumstances, it remains all the more elusive to us.

Fana’

AS WE HAVE seen, the grave is the location for the Muslim masses to await the great day of judgment. Though no Muslim would formulate this as a rule, there are two great exceptions to the fate that awaits the dead in the grave until the day of judgment. The first and most important exception, as we have seen, is the martyr. But, in their own eyes, at least, mystics also are entitled to an exception to the rule that all have to meditate on their sins in the grave and be judged at the day of judgment. The exception evolved slowly. Early ascetics such as Hasan al-Basri (d. 728) stressed their fear of hell and their desire for paradise because they were overwhelmed with their own sinfulness. They sought the hereafter (al-’ahira) because they rejected this world (al-dunya). In Hasan’s words, “Be with this world as if you had never been there, and with the other world as if you would never leave it.”47

But ecstatic love of God soon took over from asceticism as the key element in Sufism and, as a result, new views of the otherworld began to appear. For the earliest Muslim love-mystic, the Arab poetess Rabi’ah al-’adawiyah (d. 801), selfless love of God required the Sufi to be veiled from both this world and the other by visions of God. The Sufi must love God so much that even paradise and hell are forgotten. Sufis such as Yahya ‘ibn Mu’adh ar-Razi (d. 871) replaced fear of punishment and hope of reward with complete trust in God’s mercy. He found death beautiful because it joined friend with friend in God.

The Sufis, in particular, quite frequently articulate their goals after death and in life as pantheistic extinction (fana’), which may free them from what we might call in an extended sense the “purgatory” of the barzakh state or the grave. Their earthly asceticism and meditation effectively earn them an exemption from the grim job of the rest of us in atoning for our sins. Indeed, many Sufis like Yunus Emre of Turkey (d. approx. 1321 CE) simply ridiculed the Quranic notion of the afterlife as folklore for the naive masses.48 His example has been followed by many modern, believing Muslims who look at the paradisal imagery of the Quran as appropriate more for the original Arab hearers of Islam than for mystics and moderns.

The goal of the Sufis became fana’ or annihilation, which usually means the complete obliteration of the self in the personhood of God. This mystical state of oneness can be achieved either in this world or the world to come. In this world, fana’ is the state of meditative absorption into the divinity, available to the greatest meditative